Brazil eyes blockchain to snap carbon credit logjam
Brazil’s biofuels industry is considering blockchain technology to clear logjams that are preventing corn ethanol and biodiesel plants from issuing carbon credits.
According to a recent industry webinar, officials involved in talks between the government and industry leaders are mapping out the challenges of traceability – that is, the ability to document the production process of each corn ethanol or biodiesel plant all the way back to the tens of thousands of corn or soybean farmers that produce the feedstock grains. ”Blockchain technologies may be a solution for improving traceability,” Alexandre Alonso, head of the agroenergy department at the government’s crop research company Embrapa, adding that the approach would also protect proprietary information. Blockchain, widely used in the cryptocurrency industry, is a digital system that preserves a record of transactions along a supply chain on to a peer-to-peer network for transparency. Brazil began implementing its sweeping biofuels law known as Renovabio this year. But certification of biofuel plants to issue the carbon credits known as Cbios has lagged.
Via Argus